Robin Cook - Seizure

“I’m home!” Stephanie shouted, after pressing the apartment’s door closed with her rear end. Balancing her laptop bag and book bag on the tiny foyer table, Stephanie got out of her coat and opened the closet door to hang it up.

“Is anybody here?” she yelled, although her voice was muffled from being directed into the closet. When she was finished with her coat, she turned around. She started to yell again, but Daniel’s form filling the entrance to the hall startled her. He was no more than several feet away. The noise that issued from her lips was more of a peep than anything else.

“Where the hell have you been?” Daniel demanded. “Do you know what time it is?”

“It’s around eight,” Stephanie managed. She pressed a hand to her chest. “Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

“Why didn’t you phone? I was about to call the police.”

“Oh, come on! You know me and bookstores. I went to more than one and got caught up. In both places, I ended up sprawled out in the aisle, reading and trying to decide what to buy. Then, when I got back to the office, I wanted to take advantage of the broadband.”

“How come you didn’t have your cell phone on? I’ve tried to call you a dozen times.”

“Because I was in a bookstore and when I got to the office, it didn’t cross my mind. Hey! I’m sorry if you were concerned about me, okay? But now I’m home, safe and sound. What did you make for dinner?”

“Very funny,” Daniel growled.

“Ease up!” Stephanie said, giving Daniel’s sleeve a playful tug. “I appreciate your concern, really I do, but I’m starved and you must be too. How about we head back to the square for dinner. Why don’t you call the Rialto while I jump in the shower. It’s Friday night, but by the time we get there, we shouldn’t have a problem.”

“All right,” Daniel said reluctantly, as if he were agreeing to some major undertaking.

It wasn’t until nine-twenty that they walked into the Rialto restaurant, and just as Stephanie predicted, there was a table ready and waiting. Since they were both famished, they immediately studied the menu and quickly ordered. At their request, the waiter promptly brought out their wine and sparkling water to slake their thirst and bread to take the edge off their hunger.

“All right,” Stephanie said, sitting back in her chair. “Who wants to talk first?”

“It might as well be me,” Daniel said. “Because I don’t have a lot to report, but what I do have is encouraging. I telephoned the Wingate Clinic, which sounds to me to be well equipped for our needs, and they will let us use their facilities. In fact, I’ve already agreed on the price: forty thousand.”

“Whoa!” Stephanie remarked.

“Yeah, I know: It’s a bit high, but I was reluctant to bargain. Initially, after I informed them they would not be able to take advantage of our use of their facilities for promotional purposes, I was afraid all bets were off. Luckily, they came back around.”

“Well, it’s not our money, and we certainly have enough. What about the oocyte issue?”

“That’s the best part. I was told they can supply us with human oocytes without any problem whatsoever.”

“When?”

“They claim whenever we want.”

“My goodness,” Stephanie said. “That certainly begs one’s curiosity.”

“Let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth.”

“What about a neurosurgeon?”

“No problem there either. There are several on the island beating the bushes for work. The local hospital even has stereotaxic equipment.”

“That is encouraging.”

“I thought so.”

“My news is good and bad. What do you want to hear first?”

“How bad is bad?”

“Everything is relative. It’s not bad enough to preclude what we are planning, but it is bad enough for us to be wary.”

“Let’s hear the bad to get it over with.”

“The principals at the Wingate Clinic are worse than I remembered. By the way, with whom did you speak when you called the clinic?”

“Two of the principals: Spencer Wingate himself and his majordomo, Paul Saunders. And I must tell you, they are a couple of clowns. Imagine this: They publish their own supposed scientific journal, and the process of writing and editing only involves themselves!”

“You mean there’s no editorial review board?”

“That’s my impression.”

“That’s laughable, unless someone subscribes to the journal and takes whatever’s in the journal as gospel.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

“Well, they are a lot worse than clowns,” Stephanie said. “And worse than just perpetrators of unethical reproductive cloning experiments. I used newspaper archives, particularly The Boston Globe ’s, to read up on what happened last May when the clinic was suddenly moved offshore to the Bahamas. Remember I mentioned last night in Washington that they had been implicated in the disappearance of a couple of Harvard coeds? Well, it was a lot more than mere implication, according to a couple of extremely credible whistle-blowers who happen to have been Harvard Ph.D. candidates. They had managed to get jobs at the clinic to find out the fate of eggs they had donated. During their sleuthing, they found out a lot more than they had bargained for. At a grand jury hearing, they claimed to have seen the missing women’s ovaries in what they called the clinic’s ‘egg recovery room.’ ”

“Good God!” Daniel said. “Why weren’t Wingate people indicted, with that kind of testimony?”

“Lack of evidence and a high-priced legal defense team! Apparently, the principals had a preplanned evacuation protocol that included the immediate destruction of the clinic and its contents, particularly its research facilities. Everything went up in a maelstrom of flames while the principals left in a helicopter. So an indictment wasn’t handed down. The final irony is that without an indictment, they were able to collect on their insurance for the fire.”

“So what is your take on all this?”

“Simply that these people are definitely not nice, and we should limit our interaction with them. And after what I read, I’d like to know the origin of the eggs they will be supplying us with, just to be sure we’re not supporting something unconscionable.”

“I don’t think that is a good idea. We’ve already decided that taking the ethical high road is a luxury we can’t afford if we are going to save CURE and HTSR. Questioning them at this juncture might cause problems, and I don’t want to jeopardize using their facilities. As I mentioned, they were not overly enthusiastic after I nixed any use of our involvement for promotional purposes.”

Stephanie played with her napkin as she thought over what Daniel had said. She didn’t like dealing with the Wingate Clinic at all, but it was true that she and Daniel didn’t have a lot of choice with the time constraints they were under. It was also true that they were already violating ethics by agreeing to treat Butler.

“Well, what do you say?” Daniel asked. “Can you live with this?”

“I suppose,” Stephanie said without enthusiasm. “We’ll do the procedure and scram.”

“That’s the plan,” Daniel said. “Now let’s move on! What’s your good stuff?”

“The good stuff involves the Shroud of Turin.”

“I’m listening.”

“This afternoon, before I went to the bookstore, I told you that the shroud’s story was more interesting than I had imagined. Well, that was the understatement of the year.”

“How so?”

“My current thinking is that Butler might not be so crazy after all, because the shroud might very well be real. This is a surprising turnaround, since you know how skeptical I am.”